I’ve yet to see Grindhouse (most of what I see nowadays are DVDs), but I have heard one comment repeatedly: the first half was great, the second half was boring as hell. Dramatica expert Armando Saldana Mora has a great post about why most audiences felt that way.
There is a concept in Dramatica known as the Main Character’s Mental Sex. While this term may elicit giggles upon first read, it really is a very accurate method of describing the kinds of thought processes that go on in the Main Character’s mind.
In other words, it has nothing to do with the sex that you usually find on the Internet.
You might end up alienating some of your audience
Basically a Main Character can have either a Male Mental Sex or a Female Mental Sex. A Main Character with a Male Mental Sex will predominantly solve problems linearly. A Main Character with a Female Mental Sex will predominantly solve problems holistically. This is not an either/or - there can be overlap. But in analyzing a Main Character one method will stand out as dominant.
As Armando further explains in his story analysis of Grindhouse:
There’s this principle in Dramatica that states that stories told from a Female Mental Sex perspective (i.e. Intuitive Problem Solving) will be enjoyed mostly by an audience with Female Mental Sex (most women), while stories told from a Male Mental Sex perspective (i.e. Logical) can be enjoyed by both mental sexes (both men and women).
“Chick films” very often have a Main Character with a Female Mental Sex perspective - which explains why most men have to be dragged to see those kinds of movies. It is also interesting in the context of this analysis because apparently Quentin Tarantino, the author of the second half of Grindhouse, set out to make a “chick film”:
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are bringing back the ’70s…Tarantino tells you why you should love B-movies, the joy of writing quickly, and why his stalker car-chase movie Death Proof is a chick flick.
(from the latest issue of Creative Screenwriting)
Proof-positive that the Female process for solving problems was forefront in Tarantino’s mind.
Tarantino has a history of making films that are unique. Pulp Fiction was one of the first standout films to shift plot points out of sequence. It would seem that Grindhouse carries on this tradition my messing with what most audiences would expect from a gore/action flick.
When writing your own Main Character, make sure you know what kind of “mind” your most important character has. And the Mental Sex doesn’t ncessarily have to match up with the gender. All kinds of great and interesting stories can be told simply by offsetting them. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien has a Male Mental Sex, Malcom Crowe (Bruce Willis) in The Sixth Sense has a Female Mental Sex.
You can do whatever you want - just understand that in doing so you might end up alienating some of your audience.
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Andrew Hull // May 2, 2007 at 1:17 pm
The interesting thing for me, from a dramatica perspective, in the Tarantino film is that it seems that the mental sex of the lead female character in each vignette changes. What seems to happen is that the mental sex of the bad guy (Stuntman Mike) actually changes from Male to Female and the mental sex of the lead girls does as well (the first lead is decidedly female while the second is decidedly male). The shift from male to female seems to happen at the moment that Mike goes from objectifying the group of girls to actually coming in contact with them (this happens early in the first half and late in the second). This moment of contact seems to either drive him in the direction of completion (as when the girl dances for him) or flight (as when the girls confront him after getting run off the road). I also reveals the character of the girls who either shrug of a veneer of masculinity or embrace it.
2 Andrew Hull // May 3, 2007 at 8:17 am
I was a little off on the above - the argument goes on between the two lead girls in each half. The difference is that at the critical subjective point in each (that point at which the girl comes in contact w/ Stuntman Mike) in the first one she makes the choice to stay the way she is and in the second she adopts the point of view of the male mental sex best friend. (I think…)
As regards to it being boring - I mean, c’mon. It’s ironic that the banner shot on this page (for my view) is from Amadeus. There is a great scene in that movie where Salieri is watching the premier of The Marriage of Figaro. He’s marvelling at the sheer virtuosity of the opening scene of the opera (in which, while measuring the marriage bed, the groom’s solo turns into a duo w/ his finacee, then a trio with a maid, then a quartet, etc. - until a huge ensemble fills the stage). Salieri marvels at the genius that made this incredible piece of music but when he looks over at the duke he sees him yawn. The opera gets only nine performances and quickly disappears…for a little while.
I think this movie (Deathproof) deserves another look.
3 Mia // Jan 23, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Armando’s analysis doesn’t sit quite right with me. I agree with his description of “Death Proof” as a film with lots of dialogue, exposition, and exploration of characters and relationships. I agree with his observation that many male members of the audience didn’t really engage with these aspects of the film. But are those aspects really an inherent result of the main character’s intuitive problem solving style, as he suggests? Or do they have a completely different cause?
As far as I’m concerned, endless talk is just a feature of Quentin Tarantino films in general. It’s a content choice that Tarantino always seems to make, regardless of the problem solving style of his main character. Endless talk does not guarantee that a story has a main character with an intuitive problem solving style. A classic example would have to be Hamlet: a logical problem solver who spends almost the whole play endlessly talking about his problems.
Likewise, there are plenty of action/adventure stories out there that use main characters with intuitive problem solving styles. The “Pirates of the Caribbean” films are a clear example. Captain Jack Sparrow is all about leverage, restoring balance and influencing relationships. (While it’s arguable whether Jack was the main character of the first “Pirates” film, I think he’s definitely the main character of the second and third.) A main character with an intuitive problem solving style doesn’t prevent a film from including endless explosions, battles and chases.
These two examples confirm, in my eyes, that the amount of action or talk a story includes is not a direct result of the problem solving style of its main character. There may be some sort of correlation between these two aspects, but correlation doesn’t equal causation.
To understand why men didn’t respond to “Death Proof,” I don’t think we need to use any Dramatica concepts. It may be simply the choice of content/subject matter. In contemporary Western culture, men tend to favour films with violence. “Death Proof” didn’t have enough of it. And no aspect of the Dramatica storyform can accurately predict how much violence a story will have.
I’d really like to know who came up with the idea that men don’t emphasise with intuitive problem solvers. How did they go about coming to this conclusion? Again, I call out to Chris.
4 Mia // Jan 23, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Typo. Empathise not emphasise. Obviously.
While I’m here, Jim, I reread the comments I posted in the “Harry Potter” and “Children of Men” posts after you linked to them in your “Best of 2007” post and something strange has happened to all my punctuation: isn’t has become isn’t “The Possibility of Hope” has become “The Possibility of Hope,†Is it just my computer screwing up, or did something happen when you upgraded to the newest version of WordPress?
5 Jim // Jan 23, 2008 at 11:22 pm
The latter. It’s on my long list of things to fix!
As far as Reach is concerned in a story, I’ve found a couple links that might help you:
Mental Sex Audio Transcription
Explanation of Mental Sex by Melanie
Melanie on Mental Sex
For some reason I can’t find the perfect explanation you’re probably looking for. Personally, I found these audio CDs to be of great help in understanding why.
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